1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information service technology. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and operating method for connecting an application or applet to a database.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is regarded by many as the fastest growing market on Earth. In the 1990s, the number of Internet users has grown exponentially. In June of 1995, an estimated 6.6 million hosts were connected, an increase of nearly 5 million hosts in a mere six months. The current growth rate on the Internet is approximately 75% per year. In June of 1995, the 6.6 million hosts included approximately 120,000 networks and over 27,000 web servers. The number of web servers is doubling approximately every 53 days.
Various technical innovations have proven highly suited to the Internet environment. For example, in 1990 programmers at Sun Microsystems developed a universal programming language, eventually known as "the Java.TM. programming language". Java, SpecJava, Sun, Sun Microsystems and the Sun Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
The Java.TM. programming language resulted from programming efforts intended for coding in the C++ language. The Java.TM. programming language thus has many commonalities with C++ but is further regarded as a simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted yet high performance, robust yet safe, secure, dynamic, architecturally neutral, portable, and multi-threaded language. The Java.TM. programming language has emerged as the programming language of choice for the Internet. Many large software and hardware companies have licensed the Java.TM. programming language from Sun Microsystems.
The Java.TM. programming language is designed to solve several problems in modern programming practice. The Java.TM. programming language omits many rarely-used, poorly-understood, and confusing features of C++. The omitted features primarily concern operator overloading, multiple inheritance, and extensive automatic coercions. The Java.TM. programming language includes automatic garbage collection to simplify the task of Java.TM. programming and avoiding memory allocation and deallocation as in C++. The Java.TM. programming language eliminates the usage of pointers, instead supporting true arrays having array boundaries which are explicitly checked. The elimination of pointers eliminates vulnerability to many viruses and bugs. The Java.TM. programming language includes objective-C interfaces and specific exception handlers.
The Java.TM. programming language has an extensive library of routines for coping easily with TCP/IP protocol (transmission control protocol based on internet protocol) and FTP (file transfer protocol). The Java.TM. programming language is intended for usage in networked/distributed environments. The Java.TM. programming language facilitates the construction of virus-free, tamper-resistant systems. Authentication techniques supported by the Java.TM. programming language are based on public-key encryption.
One highly advantageous aspect of the Internet is the accessibility of databases to the network. Databases are collections of data configured with a structure for accepting, storing, and providing, on demand, data for single or multiple users. The combination of networks for facilitating information transfer to many users and databases for supplying large amounts of data to the many users are naturally synergistic. Unfortunately, since the Java.TM. programming language is a relatively new programming language, direct access connections between the Java.TM. programming language and databases have not yet been developed so that the Java.TM. programming language cannot directly access a database. Accordingly, an important technical issue is the connectivity of Java.TM. applications and applets to databases. Connectivity is the capability of a system or device to be attached to other systems or devices without modification. As system development organizations begin to migrate to Java.TM. /Web-enabled environments, the connectivity of Java.TM. application and applet connectivity to various databases becomes highly advantageous.
What is needed is a highly efficient, powerful and usable system and operating method for executing database transactions between a Java.TM. front-end and a standard System Query Language (SQL)-type database.
Although Java.TM. applications can be programmed to communicate with databases using interfaces such as CGI-BIN, typical object-oriented techniques, and C/C++ solutions, the amount of program code development and interfacing effort using these techniques is substantial and, in some cases, essentially prohibitive.
Therefore, a system and operating method that facilitates interfacing between databases and Java.TM. applications or applets and minimizes the amount of application code for forming the interface is highly advantageous.